Tyler O’Neill’s Redemption (20 page)

“Tyler was in Las Vegas at that time, wasn’t he?” her dad asked.

“He doesn’t know anything about it,” she snapped, though as the words came out of her mouth she knew she was lying. He might not have known about the gems seven years ago, but he sure as hell knew about them now.

It was just too much of a coincidence that Richard left The Manor a week ago, and now he gets arrested with a gem that had been missing for years.

Maybe Tyler didn’t know Richard found the gem, she told herself, trying to put the brakes on her anger. He said he didn’t, and maybe he was telling the truth.

If you love him, you’ll go with that. At least until proven otherwise.

But she had a bad feeling she was going to be proven otherwise.

She reached into her pocket and turned on her phone, which immediately began ringing.

She didn’t check the caller ID, sure of who it was.

“Tyler,” she said, “what the hell is going on?”

“This isn’t Tyler,” Officer Kavanaugh said, and something in his voice turned Juliette’s blood to ice. “What’s wrong?”

“Well,” he said, huffing a deep sigh. “I figured you’d want to know, we’ve got Tyler O’Neill in a holding cell with a black eye and Owens is filling out paperwork charging Tyler with assaulting an officer.” Holy. Shit.

“That’s not all. Ramon Pastor is at the clinic, with a broken nose and about twenty stitches in his head.”

“Where’s Miguel?”

“No one knows.”

“I’ll be right there,” she said. She hung up and headed for the door.

“Everything okay?” her dad asked.

“No,” she said bluntly, standing at the door. Her whole world was falling down around her and she didn’t know where to begin. Find Miguel? Talk to Tyler? Deal with Owens?

She put her hand against the wall for just a moment, feeling as though her knees might buckle under the weight of everything that was going wrong.

“I’ll come with you,” her father said, turning off the TV.

“Dad, you can’t get involved.”

“I won’t.”

She snorted.

“I know I’ve screwed up and I’m more sorry than I can say. But I just want to be moral support. You don’t have to do this alone.”

Not doing it alone sounded good, and maybe she was being a coward, and quite possibly making the wrong decision, but her father was there. Sturdy and solid in a world gone liquid.

She nodded and he followed her out the door.

A few minutes later, the door into the squad room opened with a bang and Juliette stomped into the room, ready to breathe fire over her entire staff, over the entire town, for that matter. “What the hell is going on here?” she barked.

Owens, who’d clearly disobeyed her orders to stay on dispatch, made no attempt to disguise his smirk.

“Answers, Owens,” she said, coming to stand right in front of him, a hairbreadth away from his sweaty face. “And I better like them, or it’s your badge.”

“Ramon Pastor called around 7:00 p.m., saying he’d been attacked by his son. I went to check it out—”

“Why?” she asked, propping her hands on her hips. “You’re on desk duty. Furthermore, you were on dispatch.”

Owens managed to look abashed. “Kavanaugh had it covered.”

She glanced over at Officer Kavanaugh, whose expression said he was mad as hell to be tied up in this.

“Disobeying orders,” she snapped. “This night is not going to go well for you, Owens. Keep going.”

“Mr. Pastor had been hit over the head with a bottle but he said he knew where the boy was—”

“And you
took
him? You took a drunk, angry father with you to find his son? That’s flagrant breach of protocol.”

The snide expression slowly melted off his face, replaced by worry. “He knew where the boy was but he wouldn’t tell me unless I took him.”

“And you’re not a good enough policeman to figure it out?” she demanded. “This whole town knows Miguel’s been spending time with Tyler. You knew where Miguel would be and you took Ramon with you to watch the fireworks, didn’t you? Maybe get Tyler in trouble?”

Anger seethed in her, her hands shaking with the desire to tear Owens apart.

“And what’s this about assaulting an officer?” she asked.

Owens shot a dark look at Kavanaugh.

“Eyes up here!” she boomed, and Owens snapped to like a scared puppy.

“O’Neill hit me, shoved me off his porch.”

“And what did you do to Tyler?” she asked. “If I go back into that cell what kind of shape will he be in?”

Owens’s neck turned red and splotchy. She put her hand over the paperwork he’d been signing and crumpled it up in a ball. She tossed it, right in front of his face, into the garbage.

Her dad cleared his throat behind her and she whirled to face him.

“You got a problem with how I’m handling this?” she asked.

It took a moment but he shook his head.

“Disobeying orders and breach of protocol on top of the letters in your file are enough,” she told Owens.

“For…” Owens looked over her shoulder at her father. “For what?”

“You’re fired.” She held out her hand. “Badge and firearm.”

“I’ll fight you,” Owens said, fumbling as he unhooked his badge and firearm.

“Please do,” she said, relishing the chance to cut this man loose.

She took his badge and firearm into her office and locked it in the top drawer of her desk, then stepped back into the squad room.

“Now,” she said, “do we have any idea where Miguel and Louisa Pastor are?”

“I didn’t check the house,” he said. “I made sure Ramon got to the clinic and I brought Tyler here. I have no idea where the kids are.”

She had a hunch that if they had been at The Manor, they’d still be there. But only one person knew that for sure—Tyler.

She wished she had more time before talking to him. Time to cool off, gather her thoughts, get her defenses in place.

But Miguel and Louisa were out there alone, and that’s what mattered.

She swung open the door to the holding cells and stepped down the long yellow hallway to cell four, where Tyler sat on a bench, his long legs stretched out in front of him.

His eye going black.

He was still so handsome it hurt to look at him. Still so loved she couldn’t imagine he’d actually betrayed her.

“Hello, honey,” he drawled, and she stiffened at the endearment. She didn’t know whether the ground she stood on was safe or was about to fall away under her feet. The kids, Tyler, the gem—nothing was a safe bet.

“You okay?” she asked, nodding at his face.

“Fine,” he said. “Owens hits like a girl.”

“And Ramon?”

“He came after me and I acted in self-defense.” His lip curled. “No crime in enjoying it.”

She imagined he did. Putting fists to Ramon was something she’d dreamed of many times.

“Where are the kids?” she asked.

“You have to trust me, Juliette,” he whispered, and she couldn’t control the sharp bark of laughter that erupted from her throat.

“You’re kidding, right?” she asked, the anger and doubt spilling out from behind the walls she’d tried to build around them. “Trust you?”

He stood, uncurling from his place against the wall, and crossed the cell. His fingers touched hers around the bars and she jerked her hand away.

“What’s happened?” he asked, ignoring her question. “Why are you—”

Suddenly, his face changed. His eyes flicked from Juliette to the doorway behind her and ferocity filled his expression.

She turned to see her father.

“Everything okay in here?” Jasper asked carefully, and for a moment, she was warmed by his concern.

“How in the world did I know you were behind this, Jasper?” Tyler asked, stepping away from the bars. “You just can’t stand having me around.”

“Dad has nothing to do with this,” she said.

“Really?” Tyler asked, shooting her a toxic look. “I’m beaten up and thrown in jail. It seems awfully familiar.” He shook his head. “Your father can’t see past the fact that I’m an O’Neill. And you’re listening to him!”

“
Your
father,” she yelled, lunging toward the bars, “was caught at LAX with the Pacific Diamond!”

His eyes searched hers.

“It’s true,” she said. “It’s all over the networks.”

“Goddamn it,” he muttered, and turned away.

Cold seeped into her, leeched from the air and the cement.

It was real. Every fear and suspicion it hurt to contemplate was accurate.

“Where’d the gem come from?” she asked.

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters!” she shouted. “Because if that diamond came from The Manor, it means you lied to me, Tyler. You lied to my face after swearing you wouldn’t.”

He didn’t say anything and the silence was damning.

“What do you want me to say, Juliette?” he asked, his cheeks bright with color. “I found that damn diamond weeks ago in a box in the attic, and you know what that means?”

“That you lied!”

“It means that either my mother put it there…or Margot did.”

Juliette blinked. She hadn’t thought of that.

“Margot wouldn’t—” she said, but Tyler interrupted.

“You don’t know that. Not for sure. But you’re the chief of police, so if I told you about the diamond, you’d have to bring my eighty-year-old grandmother in for questioning.”

“So you lied to me to protect your family?” It hurt. It hurt because she’d pushed away all the family she had left to protect him. It hurt because she’d started to believe that she and Tyler were a family of sorts.

“And you,” he said. “I wanted to keep you far away from having to make those decisions, because I knew it would kill you.”

He was right. It would have killed her. But it was her job!

“So you made the decision for me,” she said. “Just like ten years ago.”

Tyler threw up his hands. “Yep. You’re right. I lied to protect you. To protect my family. But now Dad’s going to jail, where he should have been all along.”

“Should have been all along?” she asked. “What do you mean?”

Tyler stilled. “He stole the gems in the first place. Let his partner, Joel Woods, take the fall.”

“Oh, my God,” she breathed, backing up a step. And then another. “Why wasn’t…how did he…”

“Dad was questioned but released because he wasn’t at the drop-off when the cops arrived. There was no evidence.”

“But he told you?”

Tyler nodded.

“And you failed to tell me that your father was a confessed jewel thief?”

Eventually, slowly, Tyler nodded again.

She was breathless, weak with hurt.

“We said no lies,” she whispered. “And you still didn’t tell me.”

Tyler just nodded, his arms hanging at his sides as if broken.

A haze filled her head and she could barely see through it, much less think.

“Don’t you have anything to say?” she asked, wishing there was something he could say that would make it all right but knowing there wasn’t.

“I can explain,” he said. “But not here. Not—” He nodded toward Jasper. “You have to trust me, Juliette. Please.”

This wasn’t sex. This wasn’t a boy in trouble. This was her heart. Again. And he’d managed to find the old wounds and reopen them.

He’d lied, to her face, over and over again. Before they’d slept together, she could almost understand it. But after…the hurt was so deep, so painful, it made her numb.

“I can’t,” she said. “You’re the same, Tyler O’Neill. And I was an idiot to think you’d changed.”

She started to walk away.

“And you have?” he asked, his voice sharp and tipped in poison. “You said you forgave me, but the second something goes wrong you’re walking away with your dad.”

She ignored the truth in his words, too hurt to contemplate the things she was doing wrong.

Instead she turned. “Have you called your lawyer?”

“You can’t be serious. What am I being charged with?”

“You can have one more phone call,” she said, and left, Tyler’s curses ringing in her ears.

He wasn’t being charged with anything, but he didn’t know that.

She was in the parking lot before she realized her father had followed her.

Her feet dragged to a halt but she didn’t turn. She wouldn’t show her father her tears so he could mock her, tell her he’d told her so.

“You’re loving this, aren’t you?” she whispered. “You’re right and I’m wrong. And now it can go back to just being you and me. Alone. Forever.”

“That’s not what I wanted, Juliette,” he said. His steps came closer and she held up her hand, making it very clear she wasn’t in the mood for a fatherly hug.

“A man like—”

“Don’t, Dad.”

“Listen to me,” he said, putting his hand on her shoulder despite her no-touch signal. “A man like that will do anything to protect the people he loves. He’ll lie to them, manipulate them. He’ll walk away from them.”

She turned disbelieving eyes on him. “You’re defending Tyler O’Neill?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. He dropped his hands, holding them awkwardly at his sides as if he knew they should be full or useful and was surprised that they weren’t.

For a moment she saw him as a man without. A man without his beloved wife, without the career that defined him, without the love and affection of his daughter.

Dad was a man alone, and in a night full of heartbreak, it seemed like the last straw. She wished she could feel something other than her bleeding and broken heart. Sympathy, or something, but Tyler’s betrayal stole everything out of her, leaving her raw.

She had to force herself to forget about Tyler, starting right now. Pull every memory out at the root until he didn’t exist for her.

“I’m not defending him,” Dad said, “because what he did was wrong. But I’m telling you I understand what he did. And why.”

It was too much.

“I’m done being lied to and manipulated by the men in my life,” she snapped. “I deserve better. I deserve to be treated like a woman who can make her own decisions. I don’t need protection—I don’t need someone watching my every move.”

Jasper nodded, his eyes glittering.

“I don’t forgive you for what you’ve done,” she said.

“I know.”

“I need to go find Miguel,” she said, and her dad nodded as if accepting that she had nothing to give him and somehow that was the saddest thing of all.

“You did a good job back there,” he said. “With Owens. Letting Tyler cool his heels made sense, too.”

He lifted his hand in a meager wave and then walked away to his car.

Repairing bridges with her father would have to wait. She grabbed her cell phone and called Miguel but didn’t get an answer.

She called Patricia next, but she hadn’t seen the kids, either.

She drove out to The Manor, but it was dark and empty.

Finally, she called Nora to let her know what was going on.

“Nora,” Juliette said when the counselor answered the phone. “We’ve got a situation with Miguel and Louisa—”

“I know,” Nora said. “We’re in the emergency room in Ellicott City.”

“We?”

“I’ve got the kids. Tyler called me when he couldn’t find you.”

How many times, she wondered, could her world get rearranged? How many times could she be left sorting through Tyler O’Neill’s truths and lies, measuring the good he did against the destructive?

“I’ll be right there,” she said, and hung up.